The Miami Restaurants Where We Want to Be Regulars

Motek’s steady expansion across Miami-Dade — downtown, Aventura, newly opened in Coral Gables and coming soon to Miami Beach — means more opportunities to become a regular at one of its Israeli-style cafes. Its hummus options and deep selection of mezze are worth repeat visits, but perhaps the best reason to really dig in is the Arayes Burger. Beef kofta kebabs with tahini and harissa aioli tucked into a soft pita, it’s the two-time reigning champ of the South Beach Wine and Food Festival Burger Bash People’s Choice Award. 

If you want to impress your father-in-law who likes wine, take him to a steakhouse with a deep list of chewy, expensive California cabernets — Miami has a few of them. If you want to impress someone whose dating app profile says they’re really into natural wine, take them to Margot. Its smartly curated, constantly rotating selection of outstanding bottles from truly exciting winemakers often has labels you won’t find anywhere else in town. Like Casa Jipi, a sauvignon blanc from Valle de San Vincente, Mexico, made by boundary-pushing female winemaker Lourdes “Lulu” Martínez Ojeda, a sip that would happen to go very well with salmon crudo and labneh topped with salmon roe from Margot’s small-plates menu. Margot has its own wine club for members to bring home bottles of the latest and greatest biodynamic, organic, and natural wines. But becoming a Margot regular is one way to ensure you’re the very first to find out about the best juice in Miami. 

At Maty’s, chef Val Chang’s recently opened homage to the foods she grew up eating in Peru from her Chinese-born grandmother, there are already some hits on the menu, like bluefin tuna tiradito over tender beans with an ají limo leche de tigre. But Chang is still tinkering on other parts of the menu, including seasonal dishes and different ingredient pairings, all the time. Guess who she asks to try out those potential menu items on, say, a random Wednesday when she’s experimenting in the kitchen? Maty’s regulars. Be one.  

A top perk of being a regular is when they know your order without you having to say it. Which, at Mandolin, means you can spend less time scanning the menu and more time people-watching and sipping cold rosé, like the berry- and acid-forward 2020 Buradan “Şirin,” made from grenache grapes grown in Çeşme, Turkey, a coastal town right on the Aegean Sea. Before you know it, your usual — Greek village salad and manti dumplings swimming in garlicky yogurt and brown butter dusted with Aleppo pepper — will appear at your table. Ah, how sweet it is to be a regular.

In a family-run restaurant as intimate and beloved as Macchialina, where everyone is treated like a regular, imagine how nice it feels to be an actual regulars. Chef-owner Michael Pirolo’s four-course, $70 tasting menu remains one of the best values in town. And while his housemade pastas — from spaghetti pomodoro and tagliolini with mushrooms to short rib lasagna and meatball cavatelli — often call for a red wine pairing, consider a gin aperitif with Macchialina’s matrix-like martini menu. With 1.5-ounce “bambini tini” options, you could even have two!

From scrambled eggs to créme brûlée, there is very little that doesn’t get a quenelle (or more) of caviar at Caviar Russe. The three-course, $150 tasting menu of composed dishes (also available a la carte) is a deal when you consider that the restaurant’s lowest-priced caviar option — imported Siberian sturgeon — on its own starts at $150 for 50 grams. (And its most expensive tin, when available, is 500 grams of Almas Osetra from the Caspian Sea for $10,445.) Because if you’re indulging regularly, why not go for the world’s finest fish eggs?

Look, we acknowledge that there are a couple of places in this guide that are, ahem, aspirational in nature. Having said that, wouldn’t it be nice — calories and college savings be damned — to be a regular at a place that has fancy pigs in a blanket, whitefish salad, and a triple-decker turkey and bacon sandwich on the menu? The only thing that could possibly be better is an extra poppyseed bagel on the way out.   

A farm-to-table coffeeshop and cafe run by two Argentine sisters and a close friend, Ol’Days first opened in Buenos Aires in 2014 before expanding to Miami in 2020 and now two locations in New York. Offering everything from plant-based, gluten-free Buddha Bowls to slow-cooked, grass-fed short ribs, Ol’Days extends a 15% friends-and-family discount to regulars who dine there frequently. Like the Midtown resident who stops in every day for a wagyu burger on a brioche bun with sweet onions and cheese. Do not tell his cardiologist.

A temple of house-aged USDA Prime beef, plus American and Japanese wagyu, with a wine cellar that would make Robert Parker blush? If you can afford to be a regular at Cote, you should be a regular at Cote. The best-of-both-worlds Korean BBQ meets American steakhouse is at its best when you go all-in on the $225-a-person Steak Omakase, a 10-course meal of Cote’s greatest meaty hits. Its 77-page drinks book includes plenty of magnum- and double magnum-size wine bottles, like the 2019 Cheval de Andes malbec from Mendoza ($865), in case you’re celebrating with a crew.